Balfour Beatty is building a 7.5km two-lane dual carriageway for Leeds City Council – the £116m East Leeds Orbital Route. Working with its plant supplier Sunbelt (formerly A-Plant) and wireless monitor specialist Invisible Systems, it has developed a system we call EcoNet the monitors and controls power usage.
Since being trialled in Leeds, the EcoNet system has since been adopted on another 20 Balfour Beatty sites. There are plans to roll it out to 50 sites by summer 2021 and use it on any new site that has more than six cabins. Once fully embedded, it will save a minimum of 2,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year, Balfour Beatty says.
Bekir Andrews, Balfour Beatty group head of sustainability and reporting in the UK, explained: “EcoNet manages the power supply to our site compounds by automatically turning appliances and equipment off when not in use, which in turn helps to regulate consumption when demand is at its highest, reducing the drain on the national grid and reliance on diesel generators which are so often used to power construction sites.
“This partnership and innovative thinking mean that those sites where EcoNet is applied are seeing huge reductions in their carbon emissions.
“If I look at our East Leeds Orbital Route project, they realised an incredible 83% reduction in carbon emissions in the first six months of use, by optimising the heating, hot water and external lighting running schedules.”
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